Three high-ranking officers at the center of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.'s giant trading blunder are expected to leave the firm this week, said people familiar with the situation, and losses on the trade have grown.

Expected to leave as soon as Monday are Ina Drew, who has run the risk-management group tied to the losses since 2005; Achilles Macris, who was in charge of the London-based operation that placed the questionable trades; and trader Javier Martin-Artajo.

As of last Thursday the bank had lost $2.3 billion on a credit derivatives trade gone awry, but that figure grew by about $150 million on Friday, according to a person familiar with the matter. Executives are prepared for another $1 billion of possible losses this quarter from these positions, as well as another $1 billion of potential losses over the next year or so.

The political risk here runs multiple ways: on the one hand, public alarm over Wall Street is probably not great for financial-services veteran Mitt Romney; on the other hand, Ben White details in his story today why it could be problematic for President Obama for the public to view Wall Street as unchanged since 2008, despite the passage of new, Democrat-backed regulations.

Whatever the exact electoral stakes are, they probably just got higher in a week that may be defined by an Obama campaign assault on Romney's private equity background.